10 thoughts on “President Obama’s Statement On The Shooting In Newtown”

Jim: As you know, I live on the south side of Chicago, in Grand Crossing (South Shore) to be specific. I have been growing increasingly angry at the president for not bringing forth a national conversation regarding gun violence. Obama knows the effects of these domestic terrorists on the south side, yet he has been uncomfortably quiet which is a big part of what just kills me about him and his lack of words about guns, and specifically, automatic weapons. I appreciate the president’s sympathy and tears today, but really, we need something more tangible to happen. I would love to see some fight from him on this issue.

Hey Staci,
I don’t know why the President hasn’t attempted any reform of gun laws, but I suspect that when he surveyed the scene of Repub nuts, tea partiers, and the whole lot, that he decided to pick his battles wisely. Even with his lack of action, the NRA still paints him as a radical. I hope he follows through with some real tough changes, but I don’t have much faith in the Repubs and their NRA supporters to grasp even a little of the problem. They are out of their minds with their gun fetishes. I was encouraged to hear him mention the streets of Chicago in his remarks.

Sadly, there’s such a vocal anti-gun-control lobby out there. In fact, the minute a tragedy like this happens, some of the first voices I hear on Facebook and other places are people yelling “Now don’t let this be an excuse to start talking gun control!”

Texas Republicans who RUN our state are now saying we don’t need gun control BUT we need everyone carrying guns! Gov. Ann Richards vetoed our first concealed weapons carry law and in addition to Karl Rove spreading the rumor she was a lesbian, it is believed her gun veto cost her re-election putting George W. Bush into office. The same Republicans who have cut billions from education now want to spend some of the limited resources on turning out school campuses into bunkers….armed guards even on elementary campuses and metal detectors. Some of our high schools have several thousand students so how long would it take to move them through security (think TSA at our airports). Gayle Fallon, President of Houston Federation of Teachers Union, even though a gun owner herself, is against taking away any more funds from EDUCATION.

BTW, Bill Clinton gave a fantastic speech at Columbine in 1999 but he too did nothing about gun control. And of course, Bush and his Republicans let the ten-year Federal Assault Weapons Ban expire in 2004. All this talk about the “Constitution” but when it was written, there were only muskets in existence that took two minutes to load and reload…quite a different time before rapid-fire guns with huge magazines.

Democrats from pro-gun states like Harry Reid, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin for sure will not vote for sane gun control laws. Good moral Americans are as much under the heel of the NRA jackboots here as were millions of good Germans cowering under the oppression of their Nazi masters…afraid to speak up
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Pretty much all of the mass shooters have two things in common. They are armed and they are mentally ill. The US Constitution does guarantee the inherent right to bear arms however, it does not guarantee the right to be mentally ill. A simple, effective, and constitutional solution would be to return to the day when we institutionalized the mentally ill.

If we’re looking for a simple solution to a complex problem then locking up the mentally ill is all we need to do.

As an aside, mass shootings in the United States were virtually unheard of prior to the push to de-institutionalize mental health care in the early 1970’s.

President Carter pushed the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. The key to the proposals included an increase in funding for Community Mental Health Centers and continued federal government support for such programs. But this ran counter to the financial goals of the Reagan administration, these were of course to reduce federal spending, reduce social programs, and transfer responsibility of many if not most government functions to the individual states. So, the law signed by President Carter was rescinded by Ronald Reagan on August 13, 1981. In accordance with the New Federalism and the demands of capital, mental health policy was now in the hands of individual states.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the reduction of funding for social welfare policies during the 1980s is the result of a conservative backlash against the welfare state. With such a backlash, it should be expected that changes in the policies toward involuntary commitment of the mentally ill reflect a generally conservative approach to social policy more generally. In this case, however, the complex of social forces that lead to less restrictive guidelines for involuntary commitment are not the result of conservative politics per se, but rather a coalition of fiscal conservatives, law and order Republicans, relatives of mentally ill patients, and the practitioners working with those patients. Combined with a sharp rise in homelessness during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness.

Too funny, I guess it’s your site and your rules. The President can make all the gun laws he wants, it will not curb the violence but I’m sure it will make you feel better about yourself. Instead of calling names you should try having a grown up conversation.